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Elective English—III

Notes wanted her to marry him and go down to Coney island for a wedding tour”. Masie only thought
that Carter was using a come on line towards her. This just shows how ignorant masie was when
judging Carter for being cheap, when he really was planning to take her to Europe.
The Theme that is identified in the story “The Midsummer Night’s Dream” is that Mary married
for love and not for money. This is shown throughout the entire story by the letter that Marry
wrote to her husband describing how much she had missed him. Garcia points out that in the
story “There is a contrast between Gaines dream of his courtship days in a mountain resort and
the letter he receives from his wife as he sits sweating in a hot office building”. Gaines is in the
office rather than in the country because he cannot afford it. He knows his wife enjoys it so he
saves up to send her there. Since Gaines could not have, what he wanted he made it less important
to him. An example of this occurs when he is saying that he “hates the country in the summer
and that the city is a much nicer resort”. He only says this because he is unable to go there.
The irony in “The Midsummer Knight’s Dream” is that Gaines really liked the country and
missed it. Gaines missed the country because he used to enjoy fishing, but now since he cannot
go to the country he says he does not miss fishing. He only stayed in the city because could not
afford to go to the country. Gaines decided to make the best of the situation by saying that the
city was the best summer resort in the world to his assistant Adkins. Adkins could not understand
that Gaines felt this way because he was unable to have something he wanted. He was used to
getting what he wanted and a perfect example of this was his wife Mary.
Another story “The Cop and the Anthem” has shown a similar theme throughout the story.
An important lesson learned in this story is that if you wish for something bad enough it might
just come true. The main character of Soapy shows this. Donald Peel finds that in this story “in
which a hobo tries unsuccessfully to get arrested so that he can get food and shelter and then is
arrested after he decides that he will give up his vagabond ways” (The American Consciousness
230). This shows that Soapy could not change because of the circumstances that surrounded him.
He really wanted to change for the better, but he was unable to because he was homeless and had
a poor look about him.
In the story “The Cop and the Anthem” the ironic element, which is shown, is that when Soapy
is ready to change he got what he originally wanted which was to get arrested and go to jail.
Ironically, Soapy was in a church when he had decided to change his mind about his direction of
his life. Then all of a sudden, a policeman had arrested him for trespassing and gave him six
months in jail. Soapy had been arrested unintentionally, when at first he wanted to be arrested.
He finally got what he really wanted, which was to go to jail, to eat and have a place to live for
six months. This proves that a person who wants to change cannot always have the power to do
it at that particular moment. In order to change it usually takes time; Soapy had found it out the
hard way.
In the story “Ships”, an example of theme is how the main character Johnny tries to overcome
his poverty and change his position in life. He devises a plan to get rich quick for himself and the
shop owner Mr. Hemstetter. Kent Bales explains that “In order to sell shoes, for example,
a character imports cockleburs into the near paradise of Anchuria, O Henry’s fictional
Honduras”(American Writers Supplement 409). The cockleburs were at one point not selling to
anyone and Johnny was losing money. O Henry would use made up places in his writings to
help develop the theme as he did in “Ships”. Therefore, that is why he had chosen a poor
fictitious country in Central America. He shows how this can possibly happen in real life to
people who want to get rich.

The Irony in the “Ships” is that Johnny who is poor and the factory owner, who is also poor soon,
become rich in a short amount of time. When a company carrying cockleburs come to the island
looking to sell them. The factories owner buys them, and then realizes no one is going to buy
them. Bales states that “The enterprising exporter of the original barrel of cockleburs shows up

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